Saturday, 15 October 2011

Practice Makes Perfect

Subject your body to a particular stress often enough and it adapts, gets used to the stress and accepts it as normal. That's what Abina told me on our 21st wedding anniversary last month when explaining the longevity of our marriage ;) I was wondering where my ability to endure came from. It's a fine line obviously - too much stress and the body will sooner or later blow up and break down, necessitating a long period of recovery before further stress can be applied. I have moved away from the marriage analogy and am not referring to divorce and re-marriage, i'm very happy with the stress I have thank you very much.

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As my speed-endurance is in a good place at the moment because of my body's positive adaptation to the stress I have applied over the last two months, I decided to, more or less repeat, last Saturday's Marathon Pace endurance run to see if it felt less stressful than last week (relativity being the key). The route wasn't much different than last week except that I kept away from the City Quays, swapping it for a loop around the less congested Mardyke/College Road and the walkway from Inchagaggin to the Straight Road.

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I did make a couple of changes though.

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First off I decided to start a bit slower than last week but cut-in over 4 miles - 7:20 - 7:10 - 7:00 - 6:50 and then MP @ 6:40 target.

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Second I swapped my 1000 mile+ €13.50 Lidi runners (Paced Limerick and Dingle in them) for my 1000 mile+ €30 red racers I bought in Decathlon Barcelona last year (served me well in my recent HM & 15 mile PBs - although there's a gaping hole in the side mesh - so what). Would I run better in a pair of DS Racers/Kinvaras/Lunar Racers/Saucony ??/NB ??/ and if so why? That's a totally different post.

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Thirdly I didn't fancy the idea of wearing a running belt to carry water so I didn't and left a bottle outside the front door with a half notion of looping back after 10 or 11 miles - I never did.

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Finally, I left the gels at home too (no water anyway and the only gels I had required water for consumption). I was also following advice from Keith Livingston (thanks Rick for the link) who does not appear to be a fan of gels, in fact he recommends using gels only in the last few miles of a marathon, if you have to! Here's some of what he has to say about the marathon:-

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If you want to go as far and as long as possible without hitting the wall, you must have THREE things going for you:

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1. A trained ability to utilize a blend of (‘unlimited’) fatty acids and (‘limited’) carbohydrates for long periods at high aerobic levels, thereby conserving glycogen (high energy) stores for the business end of your race.

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2. Sufficient hydration of the muscles to allow access to the stored glycogen. Glycogen is really an endless starchy chain of glucose molecules. It needs about twice its volume in accessible H2O to be metabolized. So a marathoner who is ready to race will often be slightly heavier than normal.

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3. The patience to start slightly slower than your intended race pace, so as to spare glycogen and come home full of running. The marathon doesn’t ’start’ till the 20 mile/32km mark, so go steadily till then.

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The traditional “wall” that marathoners hit at around 20 miles represents the final unloading of glycogen stores from the type IIA fatigue-resistant (aerobic) fast twitch fibres as they are sequentially recruited while the slow twitch fibres have exhausted their work capacity.

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HOWEVER, if one has trained the fatty acid system properly by many weeks of long runs to depletion, BY ALL MEANS use a carbohydrate gel in the last few kilometres of a race (but test it out in training at least once on one of your weekly long runs!)

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I headed out into the wet morning (first wet run in a while) covering the first mile in a relatively slow 7:25 but was soon up to speed. The first 2 MP miles were in 6:29 (downhill) & 6:44 (uphill) - past the point where I took a gel last week - would I last the pace, when will I feel the inevitable fatigue. The miles came and went, maintaining a steady effort which delivered a pace just under 6:40. All thing going well i'd keep the MP going until mile 16. Things did go reasonably well, except that I hit the incline up past the Carrigrohane Post Office after 15.6 miles and had to push the HR to keep close to the 6:40 target until I had 16 miles under the belt - certainly glad to ease back after that, although the remaining four miles were all under 7:20 pace. I was also beginning to feel the early signs of dehydration (to be expected), deferred perhaps by the light rain that fell from time to time.

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20 miles in 1:16:11 (ps correction 2:16:11 - thanks Rick) - my fastest 20 miles to-date, and I only "raced" 16 of them. During the later MP miles my HR was in the low to mid 150's (with the exception of the mile 16 uphill effort), which would appear to be my sub-threshold MP HR.

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While the table below certainly points towards a sub 3-hour marathon it is worth noting that the standard certified marathon course never measures 26.2 miles on the Garmin and an average of 3 seconds per mile should be added to the splits to get a truer reflection of what is required - about 1:30 minutes or 0.2 miles (i.e. pass the Garmin 26.2 mile mark in 2:58:29 or reach 26.42 Garmin miles in 2:59:59 - take your pick)

10 comments:

Great running Grellan to be honest I can`t make out why ya wont go sub 3 in Dublin... with your milage you would recover for Clon I would say...Am having the no gel or gel thing in training myself lately have read pros and cons on both not sure....

Yes, great typo. 2:16 I'm thinking. Excellent run Grellan. I like that idea of Keith's about running (and training to race a marathon) without gels. How many gels do you see the pros taking during a marathon? And what about the days before gels were invented?

I like that analogy. That's why Scott goes well - lots of stress, then good recovery with the beer and sake. Getting just the right amount of recovery so adaptation is maximised is where most of us go wrong. You seem to be getting it just right.

I agree completely with the no gels during training... The only time i fuel during training is when i want to test out something, this weekend it was eating muesli bars, as that is on offer at the fuel stations in my upcoming ultra.

However I do think that in any races that last longer than about 90 minutes you can benifit from taking gels, Even if it just provides a small increase to the available glycogen then that will translate to a faster finish time. Lydiard was a pragmatist, and i think he would have agreed with anything that gave a performance boost on race day.

as for the elites... you know that their special drinks are not just water... and many also have gels taped to their drinks bottles at the appropriate places in the race.

What I'd like to learn about is how you managed to use the light rain falling to put off the effects of dehydration - have you developed some form of human osmosis? is your system less effective if you wear a hat? Or do you simply have a hole in your head......:-)I'm with Rob (and others), you should be chasing sub-3 in Dublin, you're flying it at the moment.

Rick, Ops - I was going to correct the typo but left it in so that your comment is understood.

Cheers Trevor and well done again in MDI.

2:16 is correct Ewen, just don't tell Rick. I think I struck it lucky with the adaptation for once, never to be repeated knowing my luck.

Brendan, I reckon I got 1 cent to the mile for the Lidl pair - that's the equivalent to about 12,000 miles for my €120 Asics.

Cheers Paul, I remember Scott saying a few posts back that he "underfuelled" the day before his long training runs to training the body to utilise a higher proportion of fat for fuelling in a glycogen depleted state.

Richard, yeah 1:16, give or take an hour.

Colin, I suppose dehydration is as much about loosing fluids as it is about taking them on. So while the rain wasn't ingested it did help limit fluid loss through sweating. Having said that I still lost 1.8kg of fluids during the run - thats 790 grammes or 0.79 litres per hour.

About Me

I started running shortly after my 40th birthday to train for the "once in a lifetime marathon" (mid-life crisis and all that) and haven't been able to stop since. This blog charts my progress as I attempt to go farther and faster than I have ever gone before.